US researchers have found that teenagers who ate breakfast every day were more likely to have a healthier diet, exercise regularly and have a lower Body Mass Index (BMI) five years later compared to same age counterparts who skipped breakfast.

Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) “could increase the risk of developing early signs of breast cancer after only one year”, The Daily Telegraph reports. One of the largest studies of its kind has shown that “the group taking the hormones had a 4% greater risk of having an abnormal mammogram, or breast X-ray, than those taking the placebo”, the newspaper said. There has been ongoing debate about the risks and benefits associated with HRT.

House Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) on Thursday said Republicans will win on Medicare regardless of the Democratic response to a legislative proposal released earlier this month by the Bush administration as required by the “trigger” provision in the 2003 Medicare law, CongressDaily reports (Johnson, CongressDaily, 2/29).

Louisiana on Wednesday received federal approval to expand LaCHIP eligibility to children in families with incomes up to 250% of the federal poverty level, according to acting CMS Administrator Kerry Weems, the Baton Rouge Advocate reports.

Quidel Corporation (NASDAQ:QDEL), a leading provider of rapid point-of-care (POC) diagnostic tests, announced that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted CLIA waiver for the QuickVue® RSV test for the qualitative detection of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). The waiver makes the QuickVue RSV test more widely available for use, especially in physician offices and clinics where waived tests are used most frequently.

The Zimbabwe Women’s Resource Centre Network last week called on the country’s Ministry of Health and Child Welfare to increase access to post-exposure prophylaxis in an effort to curb the spread of HIV nationwide, the Herald/AllAfrica.com reports.

CMS has begun to collect additional data on private Medicare Advantage plans, acting CMS Administrator Kerry Weems said on Thursday at a House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee hearing, CongressDaily reports. Weems comments were made in the context of a

BIOTRONIK, the pioneer in remote monitoring technologies for patients with cardiac devices, announced the launch of the landmark IMPACT Study (The IMPACT of BIOTRONIK Home Monitoring Guided Anticoagulation on Stroke Risk in Patients with Implanted ICD and CRT-D devices). The first patient was enrolled at the Thoracic & Cardiovascular Institute in Lansing, MI, USA, which marks the start of this large international, prospective, randomized trial.

The United Kingdom office of UNICEF has launched a campaign that calls on the U.K. government to ensure the Group of Eight industrialized nations fulfills its pledge to provide all HIV-positive pregnant women with access to antiretroviral drugs to prevent mother-to-child transmission of the virus, VOA News reports. UNICEF U.K.

China plans to examine how it might relax the country’s one-child-per-family policy, Zhao Baige, vice minister of China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission, said Thursday, the New York Times reports.